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Follow the 'Farm to Fork Tour' to get a feel for Restaurant Week menus

Sprinklers water produce on Ham Family Farm in Allendale on Saturday, August 10, 2013. Three winners were chosen to join MLive's Todd Chance on a trip to local farms and a Grand Rapids-area restaurant where they dined on the produce they picked.
(Lauren Petracca | MLive.com)

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The second annual Farm to Fork tour took MLive and Grand Rapids Press readers on a journey to two local farms and a restaurant to get a firsthand feel for what “farm to fork” really looks like.

The tour draws attention to the start of Restaurant Week, held Aug. 14-24, when about 70 local restaurants offer three-course meals for $25 and several offer two multi-course meals for the same price.

We began our tour at Grove restaurant, 919 Cherry St. SE, where General Manager Jill Norris gave us a quick rundown of how involved this restaurant is with local farmers.

“We use around 25 local farms in preparing dishes at the restaurant,” Norris said. “(Executive Chef Patrick Wise) uses some of the simplest ingredients but his culinary skills make carrots and peas taste like the best thing you’ve ever eaten.”

The recipe of expertly prepared dishes using simple, locally sourced ingredients is the true secret to a winning farm to fork experience and this year’s tour didn’t disappoint.

Carly Farver picks Italian Fingering Tomatoes at Ham Family Farm in Allendale during the Farm to Fork Tour on Saturday, August 10, 2013. Three winners were chosen to join MLive's Todd Chance on a trip to local farms and a Grand Rapids-area restaurant where they dined on the produce they picked.Lauren Petracca | MLive.com

Our party left the restaurant in transportation by Dadd’s Magic Bus and headed to Creswick Farms – a livestock farm in Ravenna — to meet Nathan Creswick and his family.

Creswick wears Carhartt and has the hands of a farmer. But he also carries around his iPad, regularly posts to his Facebook page and listens to Hugh Laurie singing blues. A former engineer “playing with aircraft and tanks.” he melds the two worlds together in an orchestra of new technology and old world farming.

The farm started with 300 acres and has grown to its current 5,500 acres with free range sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, a horse named Calvin and a dog named Peanut.

The style of farming he employs came about from allergic reactions Creswick was having to eggs and shellfish. “In factory farming, there are a number of chemicals they use to keep the animal alive, and that’s why I was becoming sick. I didn’t have the trouble with the eggs being raised on our farm.”

“I learned to be organic by default. We couldn’t afford all of those chemicals,” Creswick added. “Pretty soon all of this information came out on the benefits of grass-fed and pasture-raised livestock came out, and we figured we were on to something.”

His grass-fed cows and pigs initially were sold to family and friends. But soon, sales multiplied and he now has 13 employees, not including family members. Most of his business comes from retail in Muskegon and Detroit, but he does considerable business with restaurants such as Grove as well.

Free range animal farming has its benefits, but according to Creswick, there is one drawback: “As I get older, the pigs don’t. They can outrun me.”

Our tour included chasing chickens down for pictures, a tour of how Creswick processes meat from start to finish, and a call and repeat from Creswick to his cows: “Come Boss” was answered by a few ‘moos’ but none that wanted to come visit us.

Our second stop was Ham Family Farm in Allendale, which has been in Charlie and Lisa Ham’s family for more than 100 years. The farm, which employs eight to 10 people full-time, was originally a small dairy farm that switched over to field crops in the 1950s. Charlie, after attending law school and determining that being a lawyer wasn’t for him, shifted the farm to the produce it delivers today. Complete with a big red barn, dogs barking, and Virginia creeper vines billowing out of an old silo, we learned about the farm from Charlie.

“It used to be called a ‘truck farm,’” Ham said. “We mainly sell to the two farmers markets in Grand Rapids (Fulton Street) and Grand Haven, and restaurants.”

According to Ham, a typical day at the 40-acre farm starts at 4:30 a.m. and he's in the field hand-picking produce at 5 a.m. to get it to the market as fresh as possible. Last year, the farm had more than 100 types of produce. They’ve scaled that back to about 50 this summer to avoid the “management nightmare” that the high number of products presented.

One of the more popular items the farm sells is its corn. They are trying out a new hybrid called “Irish Love”.

“Irish Love is as sweet as the popular Dutch Love, but it’s crunchier,” Ham said. “It’s tough to grow. It’s not very vigorous. You’ve got to be on top of your irrigation. It’s extra tough for us because we don’t use herbicides so we weed the heck out of it.”

(Little known fact: There is “state soil” for Michigan called Kalkaska sand and the Ham Family farms is situated on that soil.)

Jackie Del Raso holds up produce she picked form Ham Family Farm during the Farm to Fork Tour on Saturday, August 10, 2013. Three winners were chosen to join MLive's Todd Chance on a trip to local farms and a Grand Rapids-area restaurant where they dined on the produce they picked. (Lauren Petracca | MLive.com)

One of the tricks Ham employs to avoid using pesticides is “hiding crops.” We walked through some potato plants that were planted in between tall rows of corn to keep the potato beetles away.

“The beetles are attracted by the color and they tend to fly over these plants if they can’t see them so we ‘hide’ them that way and avoid using pesticides,” Ham explained.

Our group got to pull fresh onion, peppers, sorrel, and Italian fingerling tomatoes from the ground and, what we didn’t snack on in the field, was crated up and brought back to Grove.

Our day concluded at Grove where Wise had prepared a three-course meal featuring much of the produce we had just seen in the fields.

“Our menu changes daily," Norris said. At 3 p.m. we see what we have in house and then it’s a mad dash to create that evening’s new menus. Everything you order from our menu is sustainably sourced to help protect our natural resources.”

Grove tries to keep all of the ingredients they use within a 100- to 150-mile radius to maximize the use of local ingredients while still offering the variety of foods most discerning diners demand.

“People don’t feel they can grow their own produce anymore with everything becoming so convenience-focused,” Norris said. “You don’t have to go to great extremes. It’s nothing to buy a packet of seeds. Even if you don’t have property, you can buy a container and some dirt and grow a couple things. You can grow a batch of lettuce. It’s not hard but getting people past that fear can be difficult.”

“We’re getting there,” Norris said. “I love that Grand Rapids is becoming what everyone wanted to find elsewhere like Seattle or Denver. The hospital system here has brought people in from all over the world and they are demanding awesome food and culture.”

See the photo gallery for a taste of what it was like to go on a “Farm To Fork Tour” and the dishes that it provided. I hope you can join us next year.